Managing Product Variants: Sizes, Colours and Packs
How to set up product variants in AskBiz POS — creating size and colour options, managing individual variant stock levels, and handling variant-level pricing.
Key Takeaways
- Variants let one parent product have multiple options (e.g. T-shirt in Small, Medium, Large) each with their own stock count.
- Each variant can have a different price — useful for size premiums or different pack sizes.
- Stock is tracked per variant — the till won't let you sell a size that's out of stock even if other sizes are available.
What are variants and when do you need them?
A variant is a specific version of a product that differs in one or more attributes — typically size, colour, flavour, or pack quantity. Without variants, you'd need to create a separate product entry for every combination: 'Blue T-shirt Small', 'Blue T-shirt Medium', 'Blue T-shirt Large', 'Red T-shirt Small', and so on. With variants, you create one parent product ('T-shirt') and define its options. Stock is tracked separately per variant so you always know exactly how many of each size and colour you have.
Creating a variant group
Open a product in the catalogue (Operations > Retail > Products > click a product). Scroll to the Variants section and click Add Variant Group. Give the group a name — typically the attribute being varied, such as 'Size' or 'Colour'. Then add the options within that group: Small, Medium, Large, XL for a size group; Red, Blue, Green for a colour group. Click Add Another Option to keep adding. You can have multiple variant groups on one product — for example both Size and Colour, which generates a grid of all combinations.
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Start for free →Setting stock and prices per variant
Once you've created the variant groups, AskBiz generates a variant grid — every combination of options as a row. For a T-shirt with 3 sizes and 3 colours, that's 9 rows. For each row, enter: Stock quantity (how many you currently have), Cost price (if it varies by variant), and Selling price (if variants are priced differently — e.g. XL costs £2 more). Variants you don't stock can be toggled inactive so they don't appear at the till. Each variant gets its own barcode field — scan individual barcodes for each SKU if your supplier provides them.
Selling variants at the till
When a cashier searches for or scans a variant product at the till, a variant picker appears before the item is added to the basket. The picker shows available options (e.g. Size: S, M, L, XL) with out-of-stock variants greyed out and unselectable. The cashier selects the customer's choice and the correct variant — with its price and stock — is added to the sale. The stock for that specific variant is decremented on completion of the sale.
Reporting on variants
In POS Reports, sales data is broken down to variant level. You can see that you sold 12 units of the Small Blue T-shirt and 3 units of the Large Red T-shirt in the same period. This granularity is essential for buying decisions — if XL consistently sells out while Small accumulates dead stock, your next purchase order should weight towards XL. The Stock Alerts section in the POS Overview also alerts per variant, so you'll know exactly which size is low, not just that 'T-shirts' are low.